In Protestant Saxony the Jesuits had a different task. We have already seen how they instigated Frederick Augustus, after he had purchased the Polish crown by a change of faith, to adopt the principle of religious intolerance in Saxony. The heir to the throne was, however, a Protestant, and was under the control of Protestants, and the Jesuits had to ensure that the dynasty should be Catholic. This was not in the interest of Saxony, which, as a Protestant State, might have taken a leading position in Germany, whereas, in becoming Catholic, it would be overshadowed by Austria and Bavaria. The king put Jesuits about the person of the prince, and he was, when his conversion proved difficult, sent to travel in Italy in the company of two Jesuits. He was a mere boy of sixteen. His father was, however, assured that he might not only appropriate a large amount of the ecclesiastical property taken by the Protestants at the Reformation, but papal troops would be put at his disposal in case of need to silence the protests of his Protestant subjects. In November 1712 the boy was "converted." Father Salerno, the most active of the Jesuits engaged in this important business, was then sent to Vienna to arrange a marriage with an Austrian Archduchess, and, as all children of the marriage were to be Catholic, the succession was secured. As the present condition of Saxony shows, however, the Jesuits did not in this case succeed in imposing their creed by royal authority. Father Salerno was rewarded with—in Jesuit language, "forced" to accept, against his inclination—a cardinal's hat. He was the thirteenth Jesuit whose modesty had been violated by the papacy in this way since 1593, to say nothing of nuncii, bishops, and other prelates.
The resistance of Hungary to Jesuit permeation was protracted and heroic. Protestantism made great progress in Hungary after the Reformation, and the emperors looked to the Jesuits to extirpate it in that part of the country which was under their control. Ferdinand II. trusted especially to their educational influence, but Ferdinand III. and Leopold supported the Jesuits in active persecution of the heretics. Dr. Krones [ [36] has minutely studied from the manuscript Annual Letters of the Society, the intrigues by which the Jesuits sought to regain power after the Peace of Westphalia. The population was half Protestant, and the emperors were unwilling to inflame the restless Hungarians by too open a use of imperial authority. The most assiduous and secret manœuvres were made by the Jesuits to influence the elections and secure a legal footing in the country. An abortive conspiracy in 1666 served their purpose better. In the general vindictiveness of the Austrian triumph the most drastic measures were taken against the Protestant clergy. A more successful rising in 1675-1679 once more won toleration for the Protestants and checked the Jesuits, and they seem to have maintained this varying campaign of intrigue and coercion and failure until the abolition of the Society.
In the Catholic cantons of Switzerland we have, naturally, the same story as in the Catholic States: a control of education, a determination to cast into the shade the remainder of the Catholic clergy, and a scandalous and enervating material prosperity. Here again we have obtained a very interesting glimpse of the real condition of the Society by the publication of secret documents which were confiscated at the suppression. The chronicle of the Jesuit college at Colmar from 1698 to 1750 was fortunately discovered among their papers and published in 1872. [37] It is a most remarkable ledger or diary of business transactions, displaying on every page that keen instinct for commerce and high profit which the Jesuits are always so anxious to disavow. Vineyards and estates pass steadily into the possession of the college, indignant and disinherited relatives are fought in the law-courts or met by compromise, and the liveliest satisfaction is expressed when some good bargain has been made with the property or the vines have proved fertile. A Lutheran in 1727 has been, in the words of the secret Jesuit chronicler, "simple enough" to pay a substantial rent for a disused cellar belonging to the college; in the same year a pious lady's executors are not in a position to pay a legacy to the Jesuits in cash and they take saleable goods; in 1730 three fields of small value are let on terms which suggest that some simple Catholic tenant was duped. The whole story tells of keenness in securing legacies, astuteness in the profitable handling of the property they inherit or buy, and a somewhat hypocritical readiness to appeal to public bodies for the free grants which they make to poor individuals or communities. The college of Colmar was a business concern of the sharpest character.
These fragmentary notices of the life of the Jesuits in the Germanic countries suffice to explain that growth of hostility which culminates in the destruction of the Society. There is a sharp contrast between the picture suggested by these secret Jesuit documents and the picture offered to us by writers like Crétineau-Joly and Father Duhr. Few, of course, would be so naïve as not to understand that the Jesuit writers carefully select from their "unpublished documents" the occasional letters which some really religious Jesuit writes to his fellows or his superiors. None but an entirely prejudiced opponent of the Jesuits would imagine that all the members of any province of the Society were lacking in moral delicacy and deep religious feeling. In every age and clime there were Jesuits of lofty purpose, great sincerity, and unselfish activity for what they regarded as the good of man. There were many such in the long calendar of the Germanic provinces. But the fortunate accident of the confiscation of their papers in many places enables us to obtain a fuller and truer knowledge of the body than we get from this one-sided admiration of its more religious members and its public professions. As a body the Society, in Germany as well as in France, Spain, Portugal, and on the missions, was deeply tainted with casuistry, covetousness, intrigue for wealth and for power, commercial activity, duplicity in political matters, and a lamentable attitude toward rival priests. They maintained their power, not so much by the affection of the people as by the hard-won favour of princes and prelates; and, the moment these princes became sensible of their defects, their seemingly unassailable prosperity fell with a crash, to the delight of half of Catholic Europe. It remains only for us to glance at their fortunes in Italy until the year when the Pope, whose select regiment they affected to be, ratified the action of kings and abolished the Society of Jesus "for ever."
FOOTNOTES:
[ [32] Jacobi's Das Thorner Blutgericht, and other documents.
[ [33] The Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher zunge, which the German Jesuits are publishing, has not advanced beyond the first period.
[ [34] Published by the Benedictine monk Dudik in the Archiv für Oesterreichische Geschichte, vol. liv. p. 234.
[ [35] See, especially, the sordid details in Dr. von Lang's Jacobi Morelli, S.J., amores, 1815.
[ [36] Archiv für œsterreichische Geschichte, Bd. 79, pp. 277-354; and Bd. 80, pp. 356-458.