A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

It has, therefore, been quite natural for writers on the Jesuits to emphasise the fact that the countries in which they obtained the greatest control have been the most conspicuous Powers to decay, and the imagination instinctively recalls the picture of some giant of a tropical forest gradually embraced and killed by a parasitic growth. This picture should not be admitted too easily. Art, for instance, has often prospered most luxuriantly when a civilisation was beginning to decay, yet it was assuredly not a parasitic growth accelerating the decay. It is possible that the Jesuits flourished because the nation was decaying, not that the nation decayed because they prospered. The problem requires careful analysis and exact proof. We have seen, however, in the case of Spain and Portugal that, in point of fact, the prosperity of the Society was both economically and politically injurious to those States—that the Jesuits really diverted into their own organisation the wealth and power which should have contributed to the well-being of the State—and we shall find the same situation in Poland and Austria.

In Poland, as in Austria, a Jesuit of the time would have contended that the Society justified its wealth and power by its educational work. We saw how the Society overran the country and, by intrigue and violence, captured the function of higher education during the reign of Batori. From that date Poland decayed, with a partial revival under Sobieski. In the long and disastrous reign of Sigismund (1590-1632) the decay was continuous, and the power of the Jesuits sustained. One point is clear; there was a grave lack of virile and unselfish patriotism, and Jesuit teachers were certainly not the men to inspire it. The aim of Jesuit education was to promote the interests of the Church rather than the State, and to their influence most particularly were due the religious quarrels and the coercion of Protestant minorities which distracted the kingdom, brought on it the hostility of Protestant neighbours, and fostered selfish intrigue for power. The reign of Wladislas (1632-48) had the same features, and they were more marked than ever when a Jesuit, the late King's brother, John Casimir, ascended the throne. There was now hardly a wealthy house, a school, or a camp that did not contain its Jesuit. The cause of religion was intensely promoted, but the cause of the country fell lower and lower, and its disastrous and distracted condition compelled the Jesuit monarch to abdicate after four years.

The activity of the Jesuits is very well seen in the election of the next king. The Poles were too democratic to admit the hereditary principle; they elected their monarch, and each election was now the occasion for a gathering of candidates from various parts of Europe and a mass of bribery and intrigue. Reusch has published in his Beiträge (p. 231) a private letter of a Jesuit, Father Bodler, which shows the Jesuits over half of Europe intriguing to secure at the election of 1669 a man who will suit their interests. Father Bodler, confessor to one of the candidates, the Duke of Neuburg, writes of the secret campaign to Father Veihelin of Munich. An English member of the Society has been confidentially entrusted by the duke with the task of deciphering a difficult private letter. As this letter (from Prince Auersperg) caustically observes that the Jesuits divide their forces at an election, so that some of them are sure to be on the winning side (as we have seen so often), it is at once communicated by the English Jesuit to his German colleagues and even translated into Latin for the general. The general, it seems, has to be kept informed of all these manœuvres—while he edifies Europe with decrees against indulgence in politics or commerce—and Father Bodler feels that he will be blamed "if the matter turns out less favourably for the Society." Such documents as this, generally discovered in Jesuit houses after the suppression of the Society, differ very materially from the published writings of the Jesuits.

On this occasion neither the Duke of Lorraine nor the Duke of Neuburg, for whom the Jesuits were working in apparent contradiction to each other but with secret understanding, was elected. The Pole, Michael Wisniowiecki, ascended the throne, and the Polish Jesuits held their power amid the decaying nation. He was followed by the great Sobieski, under whom the Society had more political influence than ever. Whether in camp or court Sobieski was surrounded by Jesuits, and some of the most important and disastrous points of his policy were inspired by them. It was his confessor, Father Vota, who prompted him to reject France's offer of alliance and accept that of Austria; and we know the shameful ingratitude of Austria when Sobieski saved Vienna in 1683, and how greedily it took its share of Poland when the country became weak enough to be dismembered. The Poles tired of Sobieski's costly glory and despotic rule and mischievous orthodoxy, and his later years were embittered by a feeling of failure.

Frederick Augustus of Saxony succeeded Sobieski. He had qualified for the throne by corrupting half the Diet and abjuring the Protestant faith, and, although he was naturally of a tolerant disposition, he was compelled to allow the Jesuits and other clergy to continue to weaken the country by religious persecution. Father Vota was entrusted with the charge of his accommodating conscience, and concluded that the opportunity was excellent for transplanting Catholic intolerance into Saxony, to which Frederick Augustus was for a time forced to retire. The apologist for the Jesuits relates that it was Frederick Augustus himself who desired to coerce the Protestants, and that Vota prudently restrained him. That would be a remarkable situation—a loose and unprincipled monarch, who had embraced the Catholic faith only as the price of a crown, restrained by the confessor of Sobieski from persecuting his Protestant subjects—but we know that, in point of fact, it was the Saxon ministers who had to restrain the Jesuit. Augustus III., an orthodox voluptuary and worthless monarch, followed upon the throne of Poland; the Jesuits continued to prosper and the country to decay. We shall see how, when its helpless frame is torn by its covetous neighbours, the Jesuits are still in full possession of their wealth and power, and are the first to bow to and win the favour of the Russian invader. There is, however, one incident of Polish life in the eighteenth century on which it is necessary to dwell more fully. We have an ample account of this repulsive event [32] and it throws an unpleasant light on the activity of the Jesuits in Poland.

In the summer of 1724 a Protestant of Thorn refused to lift his hat when a Catholic procession passed, and he was assaulted by a pupil of the Jesuit college. The Protestant authorities arrested the Catholic for assault, and a riot occurred, in the course of which the Jesuit college was stormed and destroyed. The royal authority was now invoked, and the Mayor, Vice-Mayor, and nine other citizens of Thorn were arraigned before the High Court at Warsaw for failing to prevent the destruction of the college. A Jesuit was permitted, in the presence of the judges, to deliver a violently inflammatory sermon on the outrage, and the unfortunate men were condemned to death. A singular clause was added to the sentence: it must not be carried out until a Jesuit and six members of the Polish nobility swore to the guilt of the accused. We know from their own words that the judges trusted in this way to save the accused from the vengeance of the Jesuits. They persuaded the Papal Nuncio to press the Jesuit superior not to send one of his subjects to take the oath, and, when a Jesuit appeared nevertheless at the appointed time, to swear away the lives of the innocent men, they pointed out that a priest could not canonically take any action which would lead to an execution. The Jesuits placidly replied that they had sent a "lay coadjutor," instead of a priest, to take the oath. It is true that, once they had sealed the fate of the men, they entered a plea for mercy, but we are familiar with this hypocritical phrase in the annals of the Inquisition. They tried moreover, at a later date, to lessen the guilt of their conduct by mendaciously stating that the Nuncio's letter arrived too late for consideration: an audacious untruth, since we have the Jesuits' reply to the Nuncio, and we know that the judges reminded them of the Nuncio's intervention before the oath was taken.

To the end of this miserable business their conduct was repulsive. The municipality of Thorn was, of course, condemned to compensate the Society for the destruction of the college, and they secured a preposterous award of 36,400 florins. The citizens warmly protested against this scandalous and onerous award, and it was eventually, in spite of the protests of the Jesuits, reduced to 22,000 florins. The Jesuits, we are assured whenever they plead bankruptcy, are too spiritual to be good men of business, but their attitude in regard to the loss of their property at Thorn was not weakened by spirituality. They demanded (and, no doubt, needed) 8000 florins in cash. The municipal authorities had not so large a sum to pay them, and it was advanced by a merchant on the security of the plate of the executed Mayor of the town. For the remainder of the debt the Jesuits took the municipal estates of Lonzyn and Wengorzyn. They retained these profitable estates for six years, and only yielded them when the civic authorities paid them the full capital of the debt with 6 per cent. interest for the intervening years.

The situation of the Jesuits in Holland was, we saw, in many respects similar to their situation in England, but the fact that several provinces remained Roman Catholic gave them an advantage and kept the country open to them. Utrecht, for instance, had only joined the other provinces on condition that full liberty was given to Catholics and Jesuits. From these Catholic districts the fathers advanced with great zeal upon the neighbouring Protestant population. In spite of Jesuit hatred of the Dutch, whom they represent throughout the seventeenth century as the arch-enemy, they were treated with indulgence until their own actions brought punishment on them. We saw that there was at least evidence enough to convince the Dutch that the Jesuits had been implicated in two attempts to assassinate their rulers, and when, in 1638, a Catholic plot to admit the Spaniards was discovered, another storm against the Jesuits arose. Their apologist admits that there was a plot, and that they were aware of it; but he finds no evidence that they were parties to the plot. The evidence on which the Dutch relied was supplied by a soldier, and is not in itself very impressive; but several of the fathers were tortured and executed. The feeling seems to have been that any plot to introduce the Spaniards would very probably be of Jesuit origin, and the evidence was sufficient in the circumstances. Few will seriously feel that there was a miscarriage of justice.

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which sent numbers of persecuted Huguenots to England and Holland, greatly embittered the Dutch and led to a fresh outburst against the Jesuits. They had at that time forty-five residences and seventy-four priests in Holland, but their prosperous mission was almost destroyed by the wave of anger which rolled over the country. Severe disabilities were laid on them, the Protestant crowds threatened their property, and it was rumoured that the States-General was about to banish them. It is interesting to-day to compare the eloquent pleas for toleration which they laid before the Dutch with the private letters in which they apprised their French colleagues that their intolerance had brought the affliction on them.