A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

We have seen in a previous chapter how the Jesuits had applied their elastic principles to the conversion of India, the original and central field of the Asiatic missions. After sending most imposing figures of baptisms to Europe during a century, they announced, we saw, that the work had been profoundly unsatisfactory, and some new plan of reaching the educated Hindus must be adopted. So Father de Nobili had dressed as a Hindu priest of the most sacred caste, had adopted all the emblems and practices of the caste, and had behaved throughout life in such a way that the other members of the Saniassi sect were unable to discover that he was a Christian. Father Britto, Father Beschi, and other Jesuits succeeded him in this fantastic rôle. Rome was solemnly assured, as it was from China, that the rites and emblems of the Saniassi (which are saturated with Hindu mythology) were "purely civil" in their nature; local prelates (who were frequently ex-Jesuits) and Vatican officials were bribed or persuaded to sanction this fiction; and for more than a century the Jesuits permitted a number of members of the Society to don the sacred clothes and practise the rites of the Saniassi.

The melodramatic temper which the Jesuit spirit fostered in members of the Society counted for a good deal in this singular development of their missionary enterprise. Regarded from the point of view of the purpose which they held to justify it, one must pronounce it a failure. Very few high-caste Hindus were converted, and even these few only accepted a quite emasculated version of Christianity, as a rule. Some of the Jesuit-Saniassi did succeed in obtaining considerable prestige. They rode about on fine horses, and were borne in palanquins while natives cooled them with peacock-feather fans, and greatly impressed the ignorant natives. One of them, Beschi, so captivated a local prince that he became his first minister, and rode about with an escort of thirty horsemen and a native band. These successes among the educated Hindus were, however, only won by a concealment of the distinctive elements of the Christian faith and an insinuation that the enlightened priests at Rome itself (as distinct from the common missionaries) held the same liberal view of the creed.

It was still mainly among the poorer classes and the pariahs, whose poverty made them more susceptible to missionary influence, that the converts were found. We may regard with suspicion the enormous figures of conversions effected by them which individual Jesuits sent to Europe,—one of the Apostolic Vicars for India bluntly describes them as "lies,"—but hundreds of thousands of the natives were in some measure gathered into the Christian fold. We are sometimes asked to admire the levelling of caste-barriers which this inclusion in a common fold would entail, but the Jesuits fully respected the caste-barriers. Some of their number are entitled to high praise for becoming pariahs among the pariahs,—dressing in their ragged clothes and eating their vile food,—but the high-caste Jesuit would not glance even at his pariah-colleague if he met him on the road. He would not enter a pariah's hut; the dying pariah had to be carried out under a tree to receive his ministration, and, if he were too ill to be removed, he died without the sacraments. The pariahs were not allowed in the church; they were herded in an enclosure by the side of it to hear the Mass, and the sacraments were often administered to them through a window.

These were not the only grievances which the other missionaries, who could not report their tens of thousands of conversions, had against the Jesuits. It was equally proved that they laid little stress on the doctrine of redemption, as in China, and made very material concessions to paganism. They omitted parts of the ceremony of baptism which the Hindus disliked (the use of saliva and the breathing on the convert): they did not give saint-names to the converts, and advised them not to call themselves Christians, but (in a familiar Hindu phrase) "followers of the true God": they married mere children, long before the time of puberty, and they allowed the married girl to wear the taly according to the pagan custom:[29] they blessed and distributed the ashes of cow-dung which the natives esteemed: they permitted their converts to wear, and sometimes wore themselves, emblems of Vishnu. It seems that in some places they placed no cross over the altar.

These extraordinary concessions—they are commonly known as "the Malabar rites," as the Jesuits were chiefly established in Malabar—were fiercely assailed by the other missionaries and reported to Rome. In 1703, as we saw, Mgr. de Tournon was sent to inquire into the quarrel, and he condemned the more flagrant of the Jesuit practices. When the Legate passed on to China, the Jesuits and the local prelates (either Jesuits or friends of the Jesuits) entirely ignored his commands, and the feud continued. It must be borne in mind that the Jesuits had now supreme influence at the Portuguese as well as the French court, and officials naturally bowed to their wealth and power. For a considerable time they had received from the Kings of Portugal immense subsidies for their missionary work, and their commerce and intentness on gifts and legacies had added to this wealth. The manager of the French East India Company at Pondicherry tells us that the Jesuits in India surpassed the English and Portuguese merchants, and only fell short of the Dutch, in trading activity. In his time there was a debt of 450,000 livres on the books of his company in the name of a Jesuit (Father Tachard). Their wealth was very great, and they did not scruple to use it in the maintenance of their position as well as in attracting converts.

But the Malabar rites, and Chinese rites, and Jesuit-Brahmans were now, as we saw, a scourge in the hands of the Society's critics in Europe, and the Papacy was forced to suppress them. As we have so often realised, the Jesuit repute for broad sagacity and statesmanship, as distinct from astuteness and capacity for intrigue, is without foundation. The Roman Jesuit authorities could have destroyed the system in a year, yet they sustained it for a hundred years, and, with blind stubbornness, allowed an indelible stain to be fixed on the Society, and were responsible for the sudden collapse of their missions. When Benedict XIV. fearlessly and peremptorily condemned them, there was a formidable reaction among their converts, and the hundreds of congregations rapidly disappeared. Their apologist would have us believe that they submitted in 1741 (the year before Benedict's first bull), but that "distance and the difficulty of communication retarded the arrival of their letters at Rome." Ignoring the foolish remark about the difficulty of communication, we may observe that the year 1741 was seventeen years after their official condemnation by the Pope's representative; that Clement XII. had condemned them in 1734 and 1739, and they had ignored his decrees; and that, so far from having submitted in 1741, Benedict XIV. found them contumacious to his bull of 1742, and had to issue another in 1744. They submitted in 1745, and the structure they had raised by two hundred years of devotion and dissimulation rapidly decayed.

The missions in other parts of Asia had little success. Ceylon was invaded by two fathers in 1616, but when these were executed in 1627 and 1628 the mission seems to have been abandoned. It is interesting to find that they even entered the almost impregnable capital of Thibet. Two of their more devoted and austere missionaries crossed the vale of Cachmire and the bleak mountains on foot, and reached Lhasa. The expedition had no result, and was not repeated. In nearer Asia also the work was only moderately successful. Armed with diplomatic papers from the French court, instead of the crucifix of which they sometimes boast as their only weapon, they entered the dominion of the Turk, and wrangled with Greeks, Nestorians, Armenians, and other Christians over the infallibility of the Pope. They founded residences at Thessalonica, Smyrna, Trebezon, Damascus, etc., and pushed on to the banks of the Euphrates. In 1682, two Jesuits, magnificently equipped and loaded with presents, approached the Shah of Persia as envoys of Louis XIV., and received permission to preach the Christian gospel. Within a quarter of a century they had, they said, baptized 200,000 of the natives. Then the Persian ruler turned a hostile eye on the growing body, and it melted more rapidly than it had grown. The age of Louis XIV. was over, the French dream of expansion laid aside, and the flow of French money interrupted.

A fresh attempt was made in 1677 to induce the Copts of Egypt to recognise the authority of the Pope. The now familiar device was adopted of impressing the monarch with a show of learning and art, and trusting to sow the Christian seed insidiously in his dominions. In twenty years of assiduous labour the scholar-missionaries added much to the slender geographical and archæological lore of Europe, but their secret religious mission failed. Abyssinia also still resisted their efforts. They converted an Emperor, and he was slain in civil war for endeavouring to force the new creed on his people; they secured the favour of his successor, and a Jesuit at last obtained the real dignity of Patriarch of Abyssinia. A threat of civil war moved the Emperor to restrict them, and, when they were found to be inspiring their converts with seditious sentiments, they were once more expelled and—save for an occasional invasion in disguise—their work was wholly destroyed. It may be added that some of the more heroic of the Jesuits penetrated the Congo, and endeavoured to reach the blacks at Tetuan, Angola, and the Guinea coast. Others followed the negro to America; and the noble and self-sacrificing labours of a Father Peter Claver for forty years (1615-1654) must be put in the scale against their general demoralisation.

We turn now to the famous missions of South America, and must endeavour to attain an impartial estimate of their work, especially among the natives of Paraguay. I have previously described the model villages, or "reductions," which form the central interest of the Jesuit missions in America. From the beginning of the seventeenth century the fathers decided that they would not co-operate with the Spaniards of the South American towns. For this there was an admirable motive, and we saw that the spirit which animated the early missionaries in that region was excellent. They went out in couples or singly, unarmed, into the vast forests and along the great rivers in search of converts. The natives at first fled before them. A Spaniard was, to them, a man with superior weapons who sought only to enslave the natives and make wealth by their toil. It was at first for the purpose of removing this natural prejudice that the Jesuits dissevered themselves from the colonists and obtained from the King a declaration that the natives who had been baptized should never be enslaved. Later they obtained for them exemption from military or other service, and from any kind of local taxation. These things at once angered the great body of the Spanish colonists, and attracted the less savage natives to the missions. They therefore next secured permission to colonise independently of the laity, and, in 1610, founded the first reduction. They sent trained natives back into the forests, with axes, knives, mirrors, and other enticing presents, and the fathers themselves boldly penetrated time after time, so that by 1630 they had about 100,000 natives in their reductions. For some years their colonies were then devastated by a hostile tribe; but the Jesuits obtained from the Spanish King permission to arm their pupils, formed an army of several thousand drilled and well-equipped troops, and more than recovered their ground. In the course of time they came to have 300,000 natives in their reductions.

No payment was made to the workers in these reductions. After labouring to show that they were not very productive, the apologist for the Jesuits is driven to plead that the fathers "did not think it proper to give ideas of cupidity to Christians": an admirable sentiment, if the Society had not itself appropriated the superfluous wealth of the communities. Nor is it more convincing to be reminded of the natural indolence of the natives. They were not indolent in the reductions. Public and harsh penances were inflicted for laziness, and the hours of work, sleep, play, and prayer were rigorously fixed. Rough huts, light clothing, and sufficient cheap food were distributed weekly; festivals were frequent, and were enlivened by the flute, the song, or the dance; morality was so strictly controlled that the natives were watched even during the night. It does not seem just to compare them with slaves, or suggest that, as long as they behaved well, they were hardly treated. That they were not nearly so civilised as the roseate letters of the Jesuits describe will appear presently, but it was much that 300,000 natives were induced to lead regular and disciplined lives. It is absurd to speak of "ideal republics" when the workers dwelt in wretched huts, had no corporate property or power, worked all day for masters who rendered no account to them or any other, and could, when they were on the march, at once revert to savagery. But they were in a far superior position to that of the enslaved, brutalised, wine-sodden natives who fell into the hands of the lay colonists.