The eventual refusal of the sacraments does not atone for this prolonged adhesion to Louis XIV., even if we ignore other circumstances which detract from the merit of this tardy act of sternness. The Jesuits compromised with the vice, in order that they might share the power, of the greatest monarch of the age. In the last chapter we saw how they made use, or trusted to make use, of their influence at the French court in the conquest of England; for the moment we find them attaining a position of great power in France by their indulgent behaviour; and in later chapters we shall find them deriving advantage from their privileged position for the promotion of their influence in Spain and Italy. They looked to Louis XIV., as they had once looked to Philip III. of Spain, as the rising sun of the monarchical world, and they suppressed their scruples in their determination to use his power for the furtherance of the aims of their Society. This is singularly illustrated, in a very different way, by their conduct in the next phase of French ecclesiastical affairs.
There was in most parts of France an old custom which gave the King the right to promote to benefices as long as the episcopal see was vacant. This profitable "Regale," as it was called, had never been recognised in the southern provinces, but in 1673 Louis XIV. decreed that in future all dioceses (except a few with special privileges) would have to recognise the royal right. The King's own words indicate that the Jesuits had inspired this improper invasion of the spiritual world, and the fact was not disguised that it was chiefly aimed against Bishop Pavillon of Aleth and Bishop Caulet of Pamiers, who had withstood the court and the Jesuits in regard to the papal bull against the Jansenists. The bishops appealed to Rome, and in 1676 a man ascended the throne of Peter who was in no mood to bow to earthly monarchs or permit Jesuit intrigue. Innocent XI. sternly insisted on the rights of the Church and condemned the action of Louis. The Parlement and the French hierarchy generally sided with the King, and the papal briefs remained unpublished. The Jesuits of the southern dioceses affected to regard the briefs as spurious, and they maintained the campaign of intrigue and calumny which they had conducted for some time against the Bishop of Pamiers. Pavilion had died in the course of the struggle. Pope Innocent then devised a plan by which he expected to defeat the insincere manœuvres of the Jesuits. He handed his briefs to the General of the Society and bade him communicate them to the French Jesuits, through their Provincials. To their great embarrassment the Jesuits of Paris and Toulouse now found themselves in the dilemma of having to disobey the commands either of the Pope or the King, but they extricated themselves with their usual adroitness.
The Parlements of Paris and Toulouse were secretly informed that the Jesuit fathers had received copies of the papal briefs and were instructed to publish them. The secrets of the Society were not so easily penetrated as to avert the suspicion that the Jesuits had themselves given this information, and the proceedings of the Parlements show that they did so. Even their resolute apologist here confesses that "perhaps" the Jesuits had this information conveyed to the lawyers in defiance of the Pope's stern command. The scene that followed is one of the most remarkable in the history of the Society. The Parlement of Paris, which we have found for more than a century in bitter opposition to the Society, now (1681) publicly lauded the patriotism of the Jesuits in frustrating this attempt "to surprise their wisdom and corrupt their fidelity." The men of the fourth vow, the men who professed to be the incorruptible champions of the Papacy, now cast their Ultramontanism to the winds, and gave material assistance to the Gallicans at a time when a very grave conflict with the Vatican was in progress. It was, once more, the price of the favour of Louis XIV. Innocent replied by excommunicating Louis, and he entrusted the brief to the charge of a French Jesuit who was then in Rome. It was, of course, never published. The Jesuit authorities at Paris kept it in their hands until the wrath of the Pope had cooled and he recognised the impolicy of enforcing it.
From every point of view the conduct of the Jesuits in this crisis is unattractive. They discovered that in such conflicts it is the duty of the Society to be neutral, and they retained the favour of the contestants by making such compromises as the successive phases of the struggle imposed on them. The clergy of the French Church met in Assembly in 1681, and, under the leadership of Bossuet, formulated the famous four articles which define the rights of the Gallican Church and limit the pretensions of the Vatican. All professors and religious in France were directed to sign these articles; but the Jesuits, through their junta at court, obtained exemption, and were able to report to the Vatican that they alone had not accepted this defiant "Declaration of the Gallican Clergy": half a century later, however, when France is more dangerous to them than the Papacy, we shall find them setting aside their scruples and signing the articles. Even at the time, the Papacy was not appeased by their sinuous conduct. Innocent XI. threatened to destroy the Society, and remained bitterly opposed to it until his death in 1689.
By this time Louis XIV. had entered on his later phase of decaying power and sincere interest in religious matters. Mme de Maintenon had consolidated her influence over him by a secret marriage in 1684, and given a religious direction to his thoughts. One terrible consequence of this tardy and ill-balanced zeal was, as history tells, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and a horrible oppression of the Protestants. It would be a mistake to cast the whole blame of this lamentable cruelty and its evil effects for the country upon the Jesuits. The higher French clergy generally still entertained the persecuting spirit, and had for years pressed for violent measures against the sectarians, who refused to yield to their arguments. Père la Chaise was only one of many narrow-minded priests who impelled Louis XIV. to crown a series of unjust measures against the Protestants with this cruel and impolitic act. It was, however, the consummation of the violent policy which the Jesuits had urged from the beginning, and one may justly doubt whether Louis XIV. would, even in his last phase, have adopted such a measure if the court-Jesuits had not pressed for it.
In the sobered court the Jesuits continued for some time to enjoy a great influence, though it was increasingly checked by Mme de Maintenon and the prelates she favoured. In 1688, Louis determined to make the French Jesuits independent of the Roman authorities; but they contrived to dissuade him. They continued to fight the Regalists and the Jansenists with the poisoned weapons of calumny, abuse, and intrigue. The most unedifying scenes were witnessed in the southern dioceses, and Jansenist leaders, like Arnauld, were pursued even beyond the frontiers. One illustration of this prolonged and misguided campaign must suffice. In the year 1690 the theologians of Douai received a number of letters bearing the signature of Arnauld; and, in what they understood to be a private correspondence with the Jansenist leader, they committed themselves to phrases which no other occasion would have extracted from them. This correspondence was then published by the Jesuits, and the professors of the Douai University were expelled and replaced by members of the Society. The fraud, however, proved one more detail in the long account which France would presently settle with the Jesuits. Arnauld, who was living in the Netherlands, at once denounced the letters as forgeries, and held up the Jesuits to public contempt as the direct or indirect authors.
The nuns of Port Royal were the next victims of their relentless campaign. A more friendly Pope, Clement XI., succeeded Innocent, and in 1705 he was induced to issue a fresh bull (Vineam Domini) for the suppression of Jansenism. It was pressed for the acceptance of the nuns by the Archbishop of Paris; but it seemed to them still to consecrate the familiar untruth, and they declared that they would subscribe to it only with a qualifying clause. We have no documentary proof that the Jesuits inspired the events which followed this reserve, but the blame was openly cast upon them at the time, and the circumstances suggest it. The King—still under the guidance of Père la Chaise—wrote to the Vatican for permission to destroy the community, and in the early spring of 1708 the nuns were definitely scattered. Père la Chaise died at the beginning of the following year, and Père Letellier, a grim and resolute supporter of the ambitions of the Society, succeeded to the office. Under his influence the last insurgent movements of the brave nuns were rigorously suppressed, and in January 1710 their ancient and beloved abbey, the strictest centre of conventual virtue in France, was rased to the ground.
Letellier, a sombre, indefatigable man, whose flashing eyes scorned the comfort of the court—he was a peasant's son—and sought nothing in this world but the ascendancy of the Society of Jesus, now found the influence of the Jesuits threatened by that of Louis's wife and her favourite prelate Noailles, Archbishop of Paris. In 1711 a letter was intercepted which revealed the intrigues of Letellier and the Jesuits, and Noailles angrily suspended all the members of the Society in his diocese. The chief Jansenist writer was now Quesnel, who had just published his Moral Reflections. The Jesuits detected much heresy in the innocent work, and at once used their influence to secure a condemnation. The Archbishop had, however, expressed admiration of it, and the task of the Jesuits was more than usually difficult. At length, in July 1711, a letter was intercepted from which it was clear that Letellier was intriguing against the Archbishop, and there was much indignation among the new party at court. Noailles not only suspended the fathers, but condemned about a score of their writers and preachers for lax principles. The intrigue continued, however, and in the autumn of 1713, Clement XI. condemned Quesnel's book in the bull Unigenitus. Saint Simon, who was in the French court at the time and on good terms with the Jesuits, tells us that the bull was due to Letellier and two other Jesuits "as fine and false as he," and that in the bull "everything was brilliant except truth." Saint Simon was no theologian. We may accept his word that the securing of the bull was "a dark business"; and we know that, in its later stages, it was pressed at Rome with irregular and improper haste. It is, however, true that many of Quesnel's phrases were questionable, though they did little more than repeat and enforce the words of the gospel: "Without me ye can do nothing" (John vi. 66). But the words of Scripture were condemned as well as the words of Quesnel, and the Jesuits were able to congratulate each other that "Jouvency was avenged." [27]
The bull Unigenitus was, says a French bishop of the time, as badly received at Paris as it would have been at Geneva, and the Jesuits prepared for the last phase of their long struggle with the Puritans. Saint Simon has left us a singular and unpleasant picture of Father Letellier discussing with him their devices for enforcing acceptance of the bull. The passion displayed by the royal confessor amazed the duke, and he was not less disgusted at the ruses by which Letellier proposed to crush his opponents. The Archbishop now condemned Quesnel, but rejected the bull, and fourteen bishops followed his example. Once more there was a violent controversy, and a letter of Letellier's was intercepted from which Noailles learned that the royal confessor was pressing Louis to send him to Rome, to be degraded by the Papacy. The ecclesiastical world seethed with passion, while France slowly fell from the proud position to which its great generals had raised it.
In the midst of this conflict, Louis XIV. died (1715); and for a time it seemed as if the reign of the Jesuits was ended. The grim Letellier was exiled from Paris, and Noailles replaced the Jesuits in the control of ecclesiastical affairs. Their enemies gathered about the Regent and pressed him to destroy the power of the Society. Philip of Orleans was, however, not the kind of man to sacrifice liberal casuists to the Puritans, and graceful preachers to stern parlementarians. A man of brilliant parts and frivolous tendencies—he had been educated in vice by the Abbé Dubois—he saw no more than a temporary political expedient in checking the Jesuits for the satisfaction of his supporters. He soon relapsed into ways of indolence and vice; and the Jesuits, gaining the ear of his unscrupulous favourites, crept back to power. Dubois desired a high ecclesiastical dignity, and the course of events very strongly confirms the suspicion that the Jesuits put at his disposal their influence in Rome. He induced Philip to compel Parlement to register the bull Unigenitus; and he shortly afterwards became, in spite of his notorious character, Archbishop of Cambrai and Cardinal of the Church. Other unworthy clerics were similarly promoted, and the power of Cardinal Noailles was checked. Dubois, in 1722, secured the office of confessor to the young King for a Jesuit. Noailles, who had opposed the appointment, refused canonical powers to the confessor, and a fresh intrigue ran on until Noailles died and a pro-Jesuit Archbishop was elected.