A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

The antagonism to the reductions was in principle economic. The Spanish traders felt that they were prevented from exploiting the natives, a grievance with which we may or may not sympathise, and bitterly reproached the Jesuits with indulging in commerce. When "Edifying Letters" were published which described the Jesuits marching out once more from their pleasant reductions, facing the untamed savages or the beasts and serpents of new regions with the crucifix in their hands, people scoffingly observed that new reductions would increase the income of the Society. The Jesuits retorted that contact with Spaniards would mean disease and vice among their pupils, and they would rather manage the villages—they did not, of course, admit that they indulged in commerce—than admit European laymen. That they made a large profit out of 300,000 meagrely rewarded workers it is impossible to doubt, but how are we to judge the sincerity of their statement that they retained control solely from religious and moral motives?

Possibly the facts of their relations with the bishops of Paraguay will enable us to decide, if their action on other foreign missions be not regarded as sufficient. These facts are, of course, challenged by Jesuit writers, but the authority is too serious for us to set them aside on that account. Dom Bernardine de Cardenas, a Franciscan monk who became Bishop of Paraguay, sent Friar Villalon to the Spanish court and the Vatican to complain of the Jesuits. I state the facts as they are given in Villalon's memorial to Philip of Spain; and those who think that they are discredited because the Jesuits denied the more flagrant charges and the Spanish court, ruled by Jesuits, rejected them, are free to impute the mendacity to the bishop rather than to the Jesuits.

The two predecessors of Cardenas had had much trouble with the Jesuits, but for a year or two after his consecration he was on very friendly terms with them. They did not from the first affect to regard his consecration as invalid, as their apologist says; that idea (afterwards refuted by the Papacy) occurred to them in the course of the quarrel. In 1644, Cardenas announced that he was about to visit the reductions, which formed part of his diocese, and the Jesuits offered him 20,000 crowns to omit that part of his visitation. He refused, and they discovered a scruple about the validity of his consecration. As Cardenas insisted, they spread the report in the reductions that Spanish priests were coming who would interfere with the women, raised a troop of eight hundred Indians, and advanced toward the episcopal town of Assumption. The governor, a brutal man, had previously quarrelled with the bishop, and one would imagine that it hardly needed a bribe of 30,000 crowns to secure his co-operation. It is at least quite certain that, as he travelled, the bishop was seized by the governor at the head of the Jesuit soldiers, brutally treated, and sent into exile 200 miles away.

Cardenas made his way with great difficulty to La Plata, placed his case before the higher tribunal of the Royal Audience, and was awarded his see. Near the city he was, however, again arrested by the Jesuit troops, and sent back to his wretched exile. In 1647 there was a change of governor, and he returned, to the great joy of the town. The Jesuits, however, intrigued with his clergy, allowed two of his canons to set up a rival chapter in their residence, and turned the new governor against him. He was besieged in his cathedral for fourteen days; but a compromise was accepted, and, when the governor died two years afterwards, the citizens nominated Cardenas himself governor, in accordance with their legal right. The Jesuits then set up a rival for the governorship, secured, by intrigue and bribery, his recognition by the authorities at La Plata, and put 4000 of their armed Indians, under Jesuit leaders, at his disposal. Leaving behind them a trail of outrage which does not harmonise with the Jesuit description of their pupils, these troops flung themselves upon the armed and angry citizens. In the battle that followed 385 Indians and a Jesuit were slain, but the citizens were overpowered.

Meantime the Jesuits made use of an extraordinary privilege which they professed to have received from Pius V. and Gregory XIII. They said that, in case of a dispute between themselves and the bishop, they had the right to nominate a judge (or conservator), chosen by themselves, to arbitrate. We have seen them use this privilege in the remote Philippines, and shall meet it again. It was a gross and ludicrous claim, as the Jesuits always took care to choose a judge who would declare in their favour; indeed, Pope Innocent X. afterwards declared (as we shall see) that they had no such right. They chose a friend, a corrupt member of one of the laxer religious congregations, and he excommunicated the bishop. The Jesuit troops then seized the prelate and transported him some 200 leagues from the city. From his exile he sent Father Villanon to Spain, and, though the friar was waylaid and rifled by the Jesuit troops, he succeeded in reaching Madrid and informing the King. It happened that the King had only a few years before received authentic information of a similar outrage in Mexico, and had sent a stern reprimand to the Jesuits, in spite of the group of court-fathers. There seemed, however, no prospect of peace, and Cardenas was transferred to another diocese.

From 1650 to 1750 the province of Paraguay enjoyed its prosperity with little interruption. The troops, which were trained and equipped at the various reductions, amounted in time to an army of 15,000 finely armed men, with the fighting instincts of the savage and the best weapons that Europe could supply, so that neither the unconverted tribes nor the Spaniards could assail them. Heroic efforts were made, though with very moderate success, to extend the area of the missions. The Society never lacked men of the most intrepid and self-sacrificing character, and numbers of them left their bones to bleach in the infested forests or on the scorching plains. One must be lamentably prejudiced to refuse to see the heroism of these brave apostles; but it would be an equal evidence of prejudice to fail to recognise that, whether they realised it or no, they were the apostles or pioneers of the vast and profitable industrial system in which the Jesuits were improperly engaged. Time after time royal or ecclesiastical inquisitors were sent—no voluntary and serious inquisitor was ever admitted—to examine the reductions and draw up a flattering report for the Spanish or the Roman court. I have said that the reductions were admirable in comparison with the miserable condition of the other natives who fell into the hands of the Spaniards and Portuguese; but that the Jesuits were engaged in commerce, that they exploited their natives for the benefit of the Society, and that they were prepared to adopt the most unprincipled measures to protect their monopoly, is an historical platitude.

In 1750, Ferdinand VI., as a reward for the military services which their troops (always led by Jesuits) rendered so frequently to his officers, exempted them from the little taxation—a fee to the crown—to which they were subject, and an era of greater prosperity than ever seemed to open. In that very year, however, as we saw, Spain and Portugal came to an agreement which was fateful for the Society. Portugal ceded Sacramento, a place of great strategical importance, to Spain in exchange for a part of Paraguay which contained seven of the reductions. The court-Jesuits tried in vain to defeat this arrangement, and troops were sent to take over the territory ceded to Portugal. They were confronted by a force of 15,000 troops, gathered from the whole of the Jesuit reductions, and a bloody battle ensued. It was, in fact, only after a prolonged struggle, and by bringing superior troops, that the joint Spanish and Portuguese army conquered the insurrection. From sheer cupidity the Jesuits had dealt a fatal blow at their own prosperity.

Their apologist would have us believe that the fathers used all the influence they possessed to restrain the natives and secure their submission. On the face of it, such an assertion is a piece of mere effrontery. The natives, especially the native troops, never moved without Jesuit directions, and these troops were evidently drafted by the controllers of the province from all the various reductions. The correspondence of the Spanish and Portuguese commanders fully inculpates the Jesuits; and, as we saw, the Portuguese authorities intercepted letters in which Father Rabago directed the local Jesuits to organise a resistance. Even the pious Spanish King was convinced that they were responsible for the insurrection. They could combat King or Pope when the fortune or power of the Society was threatened. And for their reluctance to sacrifice seven out of their fifty reductions their fate was sealed. Within ten years the order came from Spain to remove all the Jesuits from their homes and ship them to Europe. The government acted on this occasion with craft and secrecy, and left no room for insurrection; the dejected missionaries arrived at the mother-country only to learn that the Society was ignominiously proscribed throughout the King's dominions, and that half of Catholic Europe was clamouring for their annihilation. [30]

The Portuguese fathers in Brazil were less enterprising than their Spanish colleagues. In the course of the sixteenth century they spread along the banks of the Amazon and converted a large number of the natives. When the Dutch took the town of Maragnon in 1641, and threatened their work, the Jesuits were very active in inspiring the successful rising against them, and they were rewarded by the King with privileges for their protégées. In 1653, Father Vieira, whom we have met in the chapter on Portugal, came out to Brazil, and the work proceeded more rapidly. The apologetic writers ask us to admire the noble conduct of this gifted father in abandoning the comfort of the court for the steaming forests and rough natives of Brazil; but we have seen that Father Vieira's countrymen had more to do with his departure than any lofty sentiment he may have possessed. He applied his impetuous temper and great ability to the work of the mission, and it rapidly advanced in organisation and profitableness, until the American-Portuguese in turn sent Vieira upon another stage of his stormy career. The reductions or colonies of Brazil were not organised and controlled as firmly as those of Paraguay. The luxuriance of the soil dispensed the natives from assiduous labour, but the colonies were not without profit, and, when the Jesuits obtained from the King a declaration that all the natives in his American dominion must pass under their control, the planters and merchants entered into bitter hostility. Twice they expelled the Jesuits, and twice the priest-ridden court secured their return. At last Pombal came to power in Portugal, and, as we saw, the Jesuits were withdrawn and cast upon the shores of the Papal States.

Instead of minutely examining the slender colonies which had meantime been founded in Chile, Peru, and other parts of South America, we will pass at once to the north and conclude with a short account of the missions in Mexico, California, and Canada. Here the famous case of Bishop Palafox at once claims our attention, and I feel justified in relying implicitly on the two letters in which this saintly and learned prelate stated his grievances to Pope Innocent X. When these letters were published, ten years after they were written, the Jesuits exclaimed that they were forged, and Crétineau-Joly very dishonestly insinuates that there is ground to suspect this. Not only are these letters expressly mentioned in a decree of the Congregation of Rites (16th December 1660), and not only did Pope Innocent issue three briefs against the Jesuits in virtue of them, but Arnauld showed, at the time of the original controversy, that Palafox himself, foreseeing the manœuvres of the Jesuits, had left with the general of the Carmelite monks a written attestation of his authorship of the second (and more deadly) letter. We have, further, a reference to this letter, prohibiting its circulation for peace' sake, in a decree of the Spanish Inquisition of 5th February 1661. To doubt the genuineness of the letters is frivolous, and the character of the writer is above dispute. His virtues won for him the official title of "Venerable" from the Vatican, and might have won a higher title but for the intrigues of the Jesuits.